"Commentary from P.M. Carpenter"

February 28, 2013

The spreading "scandal"

This scandal is immense, it's breathtaking, it's unheard of in the annals of WH pushback, and, wouldn't you know it, Breitbart.com is on it:

Lanny Davis, who served under President Bill Clinton as special counsel to the White House, told Washington, D.C.'s WMAL [and 'Breitbart News editor Larry O'Connor'] this morning that the Obama White House had threatened the Washington Times over his column, warning that the Times would suffer limited access to White House officials and might have its White House credentials revoked.

This tentacled scandal is of course kids' stuff. It's the press' right to be suspicious or obnoxious or even profoundly wrong and it's the WH press secretary's right to react like an emotionally hurt adolescent. Both of these occur with daily regularity, and their essence occurs far beyond the zeniths of power. For instance I once wrote a column in which I merely quoted a Politico piece unfavorable to GOPThink, and almost instantly I received an irate, retraction-demanding email from a Capitol Hill Republican staffer from which one would have assumed I had accused his boss of possessing the maloriented sexual ethics of a Catholic priest or some such godawful thing.

Comments

The spreading "scandal"

This scandal is immense, it's breathtaking, it's unheard of in the annals of WH pushback, and, wouldn't you know it, Breitbart.com is on it:

Lanny Davis, who served under President Bill Clinton as special counsel to the White House, told Washington, D.C.'s WMAL [and 'Breitbart News editor Larry O'Connor'] this morning that the Obama White House had threatened the Washington Times over his column, warning that the Times would suffer limited access to White House officials and might have its White House credentials revoked.

This tentacled scandal is of course kids' stuff. It's the press' right to be suspicious or obnoxious or even profoundly wrong and it's the WH press secretary's right to react like an emotionally hurt adolescent. Both of these occur with daily regularity, and their essence occurs far beyond the zeniths of power. For instance I once wrote a column in which I merely quoted a Politico piece unfavorable to GOPThink, and almost instantly I received an irate, retraction-demanding email from a Capitol Hill Republican staffer from which one would have assumed I had accused his boss of possessing the maloriented sexual ethics of a Catholic priest or some such godawful thing.